


You Look Pretty Good Down Here (But You Ain't Really Good)

by GinnyBloomPotter



Series: The Ticking of My Pulse (The Clock in My Ear) [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, IDK what else to put so here we go, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Murder, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinnyBloomPotter/pseuds/GinnyBloomPotter
Summary: Leonard may have been born ordinary, but he refused to stay that way for long.ORLeonard's backstory, as related to my fic "Ask Yourself Now Where Would You Be (Without Days Like These)





	You Look Pretty Good Down Here (But You Ain't Really Good)

**Author's Note:**

> So, as promised, the first of (what I hope will be) many side fics and one shots in the "Ask Yourself" verse. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> Story title is from "Sign of the Times" by Harry Styles.
> 
> Lines in italics at the beginning are quoted from the show.

_ On the seventh hour of the first day of October, 1989, - a woman went into labor. _

_ This was unusual in no way whatsoever. The culmination of a normal, average pregnancy. The child was average in every way.  _

_ Unfortunately for the world, the circumstances of his raising were anything but. _

Mr. Frank Jenkins was a man of limited patience and had a short temper. Carol Peabody-Jenkins, on the other hand, had patience to spare and a heart of gold that convinced Frank to settle down and find love and happiness and even have a kid or two. 

They were a happy, contented couple until Harold was born. 

_ Complications during the pregnancy, _ Frank had been told,  _ and a difficult delivery. She hemorrhaged, and we were unable to save her. _

The woman who had kept him sane and kind and patient was gone and all he was left with was this screaming, squirming, red-faced bundle of tiny limbs that he had only wanted for her sake. 

He wasn’t cut out for parenthood. Thank god for Carol’s mother, who was essentially the infant’s primary caretaker for his infancy. But he himself… changing diapers was a nightmare for him, and he didn’t have the constitution to get up with a screaming baby at all hours of the night. He’d forget to buy formula, push off buying diapers, never do his own laundry, let alone wash the dirty clothes and burping cloths that Harold burned through so quickly. If his mother-in-law hadn’t stepped in, Frank doubted he could have kept from eventually killing the baby from sheer frustration.

Harold was three when Carol’s mother died. Frank’s mother had died years before, just after he’d married Carol, and that meant he was stuck with the child-rearing on his own. 

He did not succeed.

His patience had worn too thin. His temper had shrunk too short. The child was the reason Carol was dead, and Frank hadn’t the ability to treat him like anything but a monster. 

He fell into a pattern-- he’d be awful to the child when he was tired, which was almost always, then buy him gifts to placate him. He blamed Harold for his wife’s death, but that didn’t mean he wanted to lose his son, not when he was all that was left of her, not when he kept looking into his eyes and seeing  _ her. _

Harold, in the meantime, with his sweet and gentle disposition as a toddler, had been thrust into an obsession with superheroes by the time he’d turned six. When the Umbrella Academy had debuted, he’d quickly fixated on them, and when he learned, two days into reading every comic he could get his hands on, that he’d been born the same day as the dynamic band of siblings, he’d become convinced he had been meant to be one of them. 

He was miserable and alone and in pain a lot of the time and the hope that one day, the Monocle would swoop in and plop a mask over his eyes and dub him the seventh member. 

What would his power be, he wondered?

At thirteen, Harold, who looked more like a ten year old, had finally managed to intercept Reginald Hargreeves. 

That day, he learned that no adult man could be trusted. He learned that none of them deserved to live.

He started with his father. 

Did you know that juveniles who committed murder were tried and sentenced as adults? Did you know that lifelong abuse didn’t count as a defense?

He’d been sentenced to twenty years.

His father’s house welcomed him when he was released after sixteen years, at 29 years old, following good behavior and a judge’s review of his case. He didn’t want to go back there, but he didn’t really seem to have much of a choice. 

He’d been there for two days when the blond woman appeared inside his living room. She looked like she expected him to be impressed. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

She called herself the Handler. She told him they’d been watching him. They’d been waiting for him. He was going to help keep the timeline intact.

He was finally going to get to be a superhero. 

He went with her immediately. He spent two years in training, learning to use firearms and poisons and practicing hand-to-hand combat and, most importantly, studying the human psyche. His job, the Handler had told him, was to manipulate targets in order to shift timelines back on track in situations that killing wouldn’t solve. He was to ingratiate himself with people to earn their trust, push them to make the decisions that must be made, then leave. 

They nicknamed him “Gaslight.” They told him to pick an alias that he’d use in missions. He picked Leonard, for Leonard Bernstein, who was his grandmother’s favorite composer, and Peabody, because it was her last name. 

His first assignment was a boy named Arthur. He was sixteen and homeless after being kicked out by his parents when he came out and he wanted to kill himself, except if he died then he’d never meet Bobby and they’d never fall in love and adopt the baby who would one day star in the show that would inspire the creation of movie that would eventually lead to the resurgence in popularity of the “angsty supernatural romance” genre. 

So Leonard started walking past where Arthur slept “on his way to work” and started talking to him and giving him money and, after a couple of weeks, he convinced him to go to the nearby park where he’d meet Bobby and then Leonard disappeared into the ether. 

As first assignments go, his was very nondescript. No one died. He didn’t have to get that close to his target. He was easy to manipulate.

His second assignment wasn’t as nice. 

He dated a girl named Rebecca, who was sweet and a little creepily obsessive and definitely very unstable and easy to trick and then he had to break up with her so that she’d get angry enough to kill the girl he’d tricked her into (falsely) believing he was cheating on her with and go to prison. 

And he did it. He did it amazingly. 

He had a moment when he was done where he wondered if it was worth it. Then he remembered the timelines and he knew that no matter how off-putting, he was working for the good of the world. 

And he did well as Leonard. He spent another two years going from job to job, from assignment to assignment, flying under the radar and making himself the perfect manipulator. He was great with people who hated themselves, who were lonely and desperate for attention and affection and love, because it was so easy to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. It was so easy to get them to trust him. And it was so easy to break them. 

So many women just getting out of a neglectful or abusive relationship who wanted to hear that they were valued. So many men who lived alone and isolated and wanted so badly to be allowed to be soft and vulnerable and emotional. So many people and Leonard was so good at getting close to all of them. 

Finally, the Commission decided he was ready for the big one.

“The apocalypse is coming,” he was told. “It has to happen. You need to convince this girl to cause it.”

And he was for it. He was fine. Then he found out who he’d be manipulating. 

He read the case file on Vanya Hargreeves with excitement building in the pit of his stomach. He’d be able, finally, to get revenge on the people who had dared to get his hopes up, had dared to make him think he had hope of getting out of that house. 

All he had to do was convince their sister to start the apocalypse.

* * *

He hadn’t anticipated her being this…  _ unresponsive.  _

He’d been told she was lonely and depressed and anxious. He’d been told she was plagued with self-doubt and that even though things with her family were better now than they had been five years ago, that she was paranoid that they didn’t like her at all. He’d been told she’d be naive and trusting and like the fact that someone was paying romantic attention to her. 

But then he couldn’t get inside her apartment. Then, she rebuffed every attempt he’d made at scoring an invitation. Then, that fucking bitch with the red braids and purple lips had to show up. 

He thought he’d have a chance. He thought he could salvage this. He just had to plan. 

Then, headquarters sent him a tube. It was taking him too long, it said. They were bringing in a contingency plan, just in case, it said. Maybe if she saw the people she loved die in front of her, then she’d go supernova, it said. 

Well, it had only really said the first bit. The next bit he’d learned when he’d met up with Hazel and Cha Cha. 

They were woefully unprepared to deal with a family of superheroes, he thought. They had no idea they were even dealing with superheroes. 

He gleefully “forgot” to inform them. 

Their plan went to shit too. Just like he’d known it would. 

He tried again. He went for coffee. He got her usual order, thinking they’d bond over cinnamon flavored syrup and then they’d get to talking and she’d finally like him. It was cutting it a little close, but he was good. He could do it. 

He couldn’t do it. She rebuffed him  _ again.  _

And, okay. Maybe he went a little crazy. Maybe he got a little desperate. Maybe staring at her through the shop window wasn’t a great idea. Maybe his plan wasn’t great to begin with.

But he  _ needed  _ this. He needed to get her. To destroy her, and to destroy the Umbrella Academy, and fuck it, the whole world. That whole world that had dared allow him to be raised the way he had, in the family that he had, with the father that he had. A world unfair enough to take a little boy’s mother away from him before he could even meet her. 

And then that girl. His neighbor. Fuck, that was awful.

She shouldn’t have asked questions.

But she did. She came up to him, coffee in one hand, violin case in the other and she asked him why he’d vanished for the months that he did. Why he’d shown up, moved into that house, then disappeared two days later, not to be seen again until now. 

“Vacation,” he’d brushed off with a smile. “Took a much needed break from everything, you know?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “For eight months? You took a vacation for eight months?”

__ He froze. 

“Who are you, anyway? What are you-- oh!”

He knocked the coffee out of her hand.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry!” She was still looking suspiciously at him. He turned the charm up to eleven. “I get these muscle spasms sometimes. Certainly does make life interesting. Why don’t you come in? I can make you a new cup of coffee!”

“I don’t kn--”

“Please! I insist! It was my fault; let me make it up to you! I just got this special blend of coffee-- super rare! It’s supposed to be delicious.”

He tempted and cajoled until she was walking into his house and he was making her a new cup of coffee and slipping a pill to dissolve in it just before he handed her the cup and she took a sip and then looked at the time and went running off to rehearsal with a shouted “Thanks!” over her shoulder. 

That was what happened to people who asked too many questions. 

But then he found out that she was second chair violin and Vanya was taking over for her and the timing was perfect. It worked out so well. He could go get a ticket when he knew she’d arrive and talk to her outside of the theater...

If only she’d timed it better. If her boyfriend hadn’t shown up. If her friends hadn’t shown up. If if if if if if if…

He’d failed. Again. Why the fuck couldn’t she be easier? Why couldn’t she just let this happen?

He’d failed too much, he was told in his last message from headquarters. Hazel and Cha Cha were bringing him in. He was done. 

He knew better than to ask why  _ they _ weren’t being punished-- they had, after all, let themselves be arrested. Why did they get to be broken out of prison after how badly they’d screwed up?

Of course, then they got chewed out by the Handler too. Hazel, Leonard could tell, was very much done with all of the shit. Maybe that had something to do with why they’d failed so spectacularly. They actually got caught by the cops. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Ever.

But Leonard, he got the brunt of the ire. He’d never screwed up so badly. Vanya didn’t trust him, didn’t even like him, and the apocalypse was on-track to not happening and it was all his fault. He was being taken off the case.

So he stole a briefcase and went back. 

The Commission might have thought he was done, but he knew he couldn’t afford to be. 

Okay, so he was definitely getting manic. 

He went back to the theater with a gun. He’d make them pay. He’d kill her, he’d kill them, he’d kill everyone. 

They were all going to pay. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you liked this, if you want to see more, and if so, any requests?


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